Standing at the Edge
by ElizabethAnnFanfic
Summary: Post episode fic for 4x12 Kaddish. UST. Sets up Scully's behavior in "Never Again". I updated the AN to better explain the episode numbering and storyline irregularities on Kaddish, Never Again, etc. from the cancer arc.


Timeline: 4x12 Kaddish

Category: Post-episode fiction

Author's Note: I always go by original filming schedule--not the airing schedule. I do this, because the airing schedule can create some storyline irregularities. "Kaddish" is 4x12 and "Never Again" is 4x13 in the film schedule. This fic is meant to set us up for "Never Again" and takes place between that episode and "Kaddish". This is the perfect example of airing schedules messing with the storyline. Scully is unaware that she has cancer until 4x15 "Memento Mori" after something disturbing happens in 4x14 "Leonard Betts". In the airing schedule, we would except that Scully would perhaps be acting as if she suspected/knew she had cancer in both "Never Again" and "Kaddish". But, other than OOC behavior in "Never Again" there is no word about cancer. Chris Carter was forced to change the schedule in which these episodes aired due to his unhappiness with Morgan and Wong's treatment of Scully's character in "Never Again". By inserting this episode in the midst of the cancer arc, he tried to give some meaning to her behavior, but ultimately he resented having to disrupt what he thought was a very emotional story for Mulder and Scully. I have also used the original film schedule in addressing "Never Again" in "She Had a Life". Check that out, if this fic doesn't cover enough for you! If you're looking for an episode guide that uses the original film schedule numbering, Red Wolf's comes to mind. Google away :)

She wasn't the rebellious spirit that Melissa had been, but she had her moments. She hadn't shaped up to be everything her parents would have hoped. Joining the academy ranked right up there among her top rebellious acts—not done solely as an act of rebellion, but an action that had a most serious reaction. There were other choices she'd made that were notable. Remaining single. Not being the best Catholic. These things were all an annoyance to her mother. The kind of things of that probably made her mother wonder where she had gone wrong.

Lately she wasn't feeling the need to rebel against her mother.

She leaned forward in the shower, supporting her weight on one hand splayed against the slippery white tiles. She ran her other hand over her wet hair to the base of her neck.

'Maybe I'll dye my hair.'

Sometimes she wondered if men would be less intimidated by her if she had blond hair. Or, if she would be taken more seriously in her professional life if she was a brunette. Red came with baggage. Everyone assumed you were a hot head. A minx. Libidinous. And if it turned out that you were fairly uninteresting—that your apartment was always in perfect order, that you maintained a professional attitude in your work life, and that you spent more time reading than engaging in heart pumping sexual activities—then you were a disappointment. You didn't live up to the fantasy. As if you ever could.

She grabbed her shampoo bottle and flipped the lid. She squeezed out a yellow glistening blob. She hadn't even changed shampoos in years. She was in a permanent holding pattern.

'Maybe I'll move somewhere.'

Pack up the apartment. No. Just throw some clothes in her suitcase and get in the car. Drive. Somewhere. Somewhere warm. Forget the clothes. Just get in the car, drive, and buy new clothes when she got there. Clothes that weren't gray, black, and white. Maybe even buy a shiny new car and drive really far away.

She scrubbed away at her scalp, working up a white lather with her nimble fingers. She hadn't been feeling right. It was just a general sense that something was off. But she couldn't ignore it, because she knew her body—she was either sick or depressed. Depression could feel like illness. The heaviness, the lethargy, and the desire to curl inwards. She was feeling all of that.

Sticking her head under the spray of water, she rinsed the suds out of her hair before shutting off the water with a decisive motion. She pulled back the shower curtain and reached for her towel. Toweling off, she avoided glancing at her body in the mirror. She'd still be herself somewhere else. She couldn't very well escape that reality.

Lately she didn't even want to look at herself.

'Maybe I'll lose some weight.'

She wrapped the towel around herself, tucking the corner in on itself. It was an incredibly soft towel. She'd spent a fortune on new Egyptian cotton towels and sheets. That was a luxury. She'd been excited to pull them out of their plastic sleeves and run her fingers across them. But, there had to be more fulfilling things in life than soft linens. Maybe she was trading those things for an all-consuming job and a magazine quality apartment that she shared with no one.

She grabbed her brush off the counter and began to pull it through her slick locks. She chastised herself in the mirror.

'Maybe I'll be just fine.'

It wasn't the first time she had felt restless. She'd always brushed it off and continued onwards and upwards. If only it wasn't for the feeling that she was Sisyphus rolling a boulder up a hill for all eternity.

Lately she was barely getting through to tomorrow.

'Stiff upper lip, Dana,' she thought to herself, putting the brush back down. 'You'll make it through.'

It wasn't like she could give up. Could she?

If she drove away and moved somewhere far away and dyed her hair and lost those last five pounds, there would be people left in her wake. She'd be disappointing people. Her mother would wonder what had come over her—if she'd lost her mind. Because, that wasn't Dana Scully. Dana Scully committed. She worked endlessly. She was tireless. Except, she was feeling tired and frustrated. She was feeling like she needed to lie down for two weeks straight.

And there would be Mulder. Her impossible partner. He would make her disappearance his personal tragedy. He had a way of doing that. Self centered didn't even begin to describe whatever masochistic narcissistic psychological disorder Mulder suffered from.

Lately she wanted to rebel against…

She reached for her toothbrush and toothpaste. She began to brush her teeth harder than she knew was recommended—gum damage be damned.

She wondered how long it would take him to realize that she was gone. Would he look up one morning and see that she wasn't there or would he get panicked when she didn't answer one of his relentless phone calls? When a monster needed catching, would he be horrified to find his sidekick had flown south?

Lately she was feeling underappreciated.

Maybe she didn't need to lie down. Maybe curling inward wasn't the answer. Maybe she needed to live. Do all the things she'd put on hold for the past half decade.

'Maybe I'll just get drunk. Hit the bars.'

That's what twenty-something Dana would have done to recover from a man.

She spit the toothpaste into the sink and turned the water back on to wash the bowl clean.

Correction: Not a man this time. A partner. There was no man in the sense that twenty-something Dana would have understood. Scully sighed heavily at the thought. Dana wouldn't have understood any of it.

She slipped her towel off and grabbed her robe before heading out of the bathroom.

She didn't really hold her liquor very well anyway. But, maybe if she did leave town, she'd finally meet someone. It certainly wasn't going to happen here. With her exhausting job. With Mulder's ever present gaze.

Maybe she'd have some fun. Blonds were supposed to have more fun. Maybe it would work out: he'd be great and they'd be perfect together. Maybe she could make someone her own. Nothing unusual about it. Just a normal relationship without boundaries and rules and complications.

She slid into her bed and reached for the book on her bedside table.

'I'll be fine,' she told herself once more.

She could still hold it together. Play her role. Do her job. She'd been doing it for several weeks quite successfully. It was only when she came home that this feeling of dissatisfaction began to steel over her. That and the general sense that something wasn't right.

She opened the book to the page marked by her cross shaped bookmark just as her cell phone began to jump on the table. She rolled her eyes. No chance that her mother was calling at this hour. There was only one person that clueless.

"Scully," she stated flatly into the phone.

"I've been reading the Bible."

No, 'Hello, Scully. Sorry to disturb you.'

"The Bible, Mulder?"

"Brushing up some more on my Old Testament knowledge. In case I ever need to make my own mud man."

Mulder never let these cases go. He'd talk about them for days. Ad nauseam. Until a new fascination passed across his desk and sent them back out into the field.

"I don't ever want to think of you crouched in a cemetery like Dr. Frankenstein making a mud Scully, Mulder."

"No need. You'll out-live me by decades, Scully."

"Particularly if you don't stop eating like a teenager."

"I am one in all but years."

That she knew.

"Besides, you won't find any golem making instructions in the Bible," she said, fingering her abandoned book mindlessly.

"There's some other pretty interesting stuff in here though."

He'd seemed more than a little uncomfortable with the religious aspect of their most recent case. She'd taken control more than usual while he stood by. Unusual, because this was still his gig. They were his X-Files. It was his office. It was his quest.

She paused for a moment as she realized that her pillow smelled of her shampoo.

"I haven't changed shampoos in years," she said interrupting him.

She hadn't been listening to what he was saying. Probably something about theology or Gothic literature or whatever tangent his brain was on and he'd called about.

"What's that, Scully?" he asked.

"Oh." She felt a little silly repeating herself. She had spoken out loud what she was thinking without meaning to. "I haven't changed what shampoo I use in a while."

There was silence. All she heard was Mulder's breathing for a moment. Maybe he was thinking she was an incorrigible girl, who sat awake at night contemplating her shampoo and fingernails.

"I like the way your shampoo smells," he finally responded softly.

Fair enough. She liked the way Mulder's shaving cream smelled. She knew the smell of his soap and his shaving cream. He probably was well acquainted with the smell of her lemony shampoo that she'd been using before she ever started work on the X-Files. It probably seemed as much a part of her as her red hair and her diminutive stature. They knew intimate details about each other. Brands of toothpaste. Which side of the bed. Morning or night time showers. This was the kind of knowledge that partners accumulated about each other over time. Mulder was her partner—at work. She didn't have the other kind of partner. And yet…

Lately she didn't know where she stood. But it felt like she was out on the ledge of something with a stiff wind stirring about her ankles.

Scully picked the book off her lap and moved it to the table. She was too tired to read anyway.

"I'm going to go to sleep, Mulder. I'll see you tomorrow."


End file.
